(entry last updated: 2003-01-23 18:20:11)

Garry Trudeau’s still out, it appears: today’s comic and March 28, 2002’s

• Ruben Bolling’s Tom the Dancing Bug strip is too much. He introduces a new superhero to save the day: “Judge Scalia, crusading Supreme Court Justice, who fights a never-ending battle to protect the powerful and the wealthy.” Is that bespectacled character really supposed to be Larry Lessig, though? (Sorry! I see you need to be a subscriber - I’ll try to keep trolling to find a free version.)

• Wired announces that Hilary Rosen will resign at the end of the year, and profiles her. In parallel, Wired discusses the fact that the porn industry, the only consistently profitable Internet business, is in favor of file sharing - at least on their terms, which is based on a purely promotional model.

• The Register’s sendoff for Ms. Rosen is a little nastier. At Slashdot we at least get to hear from both sides. Jenny Levine isn’t in so forgiving a mood, though. She cites the CNet article

• Is this an indication of what a less restrictive intellectual property domain means for innovation? Slashdot reports that the Australian company OzChip is selling legal mod-chips for the XBox that make it usable in ways that Microsoft would not have planned (running Linux, for example.)

• I posted something about a machine that identified a song based on hearing the questioner hum a few bars - here’s an article from the NYTimes showing some potential applications - and although one might ask how the database that is used was constructed, the article explains why the creators think they’ve avoided copyright infringement.

• Round II of American Idol gets a look in the Times, including a discussion of the recording business behind it: ‘American Idol’ Feeds Hopefuls to a Shaky Music Business

• A letter to the editor today (in response to this post-Eldred article) will be a great exercise for upcoming classes: can you spot all the problems in it? We can start with the easy one: formal registration for copyright protection is no longer required. As for the latter, Jenny Levine can probably explain why the maintenance of such a collection will not be “cost-effective.” (I don’t know what MIT is spending on DSpace, but it isn’t small change)

• CNet has an interview with ex-EFFer Robin Gross on digital copyright as she prepares to found a group called IP Justice.

• Charles Grassley wants some oversight on what TIA will and won’t do.

• Ed Felten adds a few points to the discussion of copyright rhetoric.

• The New York Times reports that an AT&T researcher, using crytanalysis tools, has figured out a process for generating master keys of real-world locks. Ed Felten is following this development here and here.

• The Wired commentary on the imminent end of the recording industry posted here yesterday gets the Slashdot treatment today: Recording Industry Extinction Predicted RSN. There are a couple of good comments among the usual screeds.

• Declan McCullagh reports on the formation of the Alliance for Digital Progress. Although the CBDTPA/SSSCA is the stated target, there is a larger agenda cited in the article. Donna has a very extensive discussion of the parallels and distinctions between the ADP and the EFF.

• Larry Lessig reports that The Economist is going whole hog - back to the 1790 Act timetables for copyright. Their related article summarizes some of the issues around the “compromise” of last week.